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What I noticed while reading this book spanning a year in the life of Jason Taylor, our main character and narrator, is how real it felt. Real enough to be biographical. Turns out that it is semi-biographical. One year that strictly followed David Mitchell's actual life at 13? No, probably not. Like most books written of memories plucked out of the past, I believe that much here is fiction, but who could say exactly, excepting Mitchell himself. I do know that pieces, whole sections even, were so...
I have a soft spot for coming of age books. So whenever I start a coming of age, I keep chanting, "please be good". I hate it when I don't like such story as I think they are beautiful, if written in right way, and perhaps one of the hardest kind to write. It's difficult to capture the emotions of an adolescent. It's such a tender age where kids are coming to terms to with life, when they try to fit in or hide away; when parents let them come out of their shadows and the brutal world is trying t...
Just as I opened the cover of the book, I was hit by a barrage of praise for the book comments. May be I should have stopped right there. But I didn't. Hence this review.When I watch a Hollywood movie or a TV show involving American schools, I see schoolkids overly concerned with social status and pecking order. There are these popular and cool kids, then there are nerds and other such stereotypes. They have to constantly worry about whose parties they get invited to, who they are seen talking t...
This warm and big-hearted coming-of-age tale of a 13-year old boy, Jason Taylor, set in rural south central England in the early 80’s has plenty of charm. It’s sweet, but not sappy. Its magic lies in the capturing of innocence of that age at that time and place, from the electricity of a first kiss and sickness from a first cigarette to the pull of dancing to the Talking Heads and of jingoistic feelings inspired by Maggie Thatcher’s war for the Falkland Islands. The dark side of things in this s...
“Black Swan Green” is a tender story about 13-year-old Jason Taylor and the challenges of adolescence. The teenage years can be tumultuous but significantly harder for Jason on account of a debilitating stammer. In Jason, Mitchell successfully created a young protagonist I quickly grew to love and wished to defend. He was having a tough time at school and even his older sister disdainfully referred to him as "Thing". But Jason was a bright kid with a gift of writing. Sadly for him, his poems, pu...
In every review of "Black Swan Green" I've read, the reviewer made sure to include some remark like "This isn't nearly as ambitious as 'Cloud Atlas'" or "I was expecting this to be more like 'Cloud Atlas' and, like, it totally wasn't." And that's really not fair to BSG because the two books are delightful and beautiful in their own ways for different reasons.I had no idea what to expect from this book. I picked it up because I bloody love David Mitchell (and, yes, "Cloud Atlas," which I do adore...
“Run across a field of daisies at warp speed but keep your eyes on the ground. It’s ace. Petalled stars and dandelion comets streak the green universe. Moran and I got to the barn at the far side, dizzy with intergalactic travel.”Every childhood is unique so every book about childhood is capable to add something new and if the book is good it makes a reader return to one’s own childhood and to compare one’s own experience with the feelings and impressions of the main character.And Black Swan Gre...
Book 4 of the David Mitchell-a-thon coming soon. I'm so happy to be re-reading this, as it's a firm favourite.********************************"Often I think boys don't become men. Boys just get papier-mâchéd inside a man's mask. Sometimes you can tell the boy is still in there."This book... I loved it on so many levels. It was just so honest. Painfully so. No matter that the main protagonist is a young, awkward male. I still got it. I felt it. David Mitchell writes so well about the exquisite
Rating: 1.5* of five (p66)Strike one: Teenaged protagonist.Strike two, and ball one of strike three: Majgicqk. Or something like it.Strike three: David Mitchell's writing reminds me of all the MFA program writing I've ever read.I thought The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet and Cloud Atlas were disorganized, and NO I did NOT misunderstand the fractured POV he used, I thought he did a poor job of executing it, and I found the preciosity of his phrasemaking in each of the three books I've either
Sometimes I look forward to reviewing a book; other times it can feel like an unwanted chore, like mopping the floor. This falls into the latter category. Not because I didn’t enjoy it – I did – but because I can’t find much to say about it. It’s about a thirteen year old boy who is bullied at school. As a parent boys are difficult at thirteen. The spontaneity and moments of genius have retreated behind double glazing. A surly self-consciousness has replaced the old inclination to dig and dance
I think it was the summer between eighth and ninth grades that I had an absolutely hellish summer camp experience.* For whatever reason I got branded as the person to pick on and just about everything that I did was turned into a series of 'jokes' at my expense. I haven't thought of this experience in quite sometime, it's sort of one of those things that I just don't dwell on, but it was one of those times that seriously fucked me up. Some of the taunting that Jason Taylor goes through in this b...
David Mitchell is known for dazzling innovation and dizzying ambition. Intricately structured novels such as Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten are grand kaleidoscopes of intersecting voices and places. This book is a change of pace, however. It focuses on a single character in a single location. But despite its narrowed scope, it is no less powerful or captivating than his other works.Jason Taylor is our hero, a thirteen-year-old boy in the sleepy middle-class town of Black Swan Green, Worcestershire...
I remember describing this book to a coworker:Me: "It's about this little stuttering English kid who lives out in some little village during the Thatcher era, and sort of like, his coming of age kind of experiences?"Coworker: "Oh God, that sounds awful."Me: "No! I mean, I know it sounds awful the way I just explained it, but the book's actually really, really great!"Two days later....Me: (privately, to self) "Oh, God, this is awful."I don't know what happened! This book started out really amazin...
So ends my reading of all of David Mitchell’s published material to date! Black Swan Green is Mitchell’s most personal work to date and it’s also one of his stronger novels. There’s none of the experimental, fractured narrative that made Cloud Atlas such a unique read, nor are there the magical, mystical, or otherwise supernatural individuals that populate The Bone Clocks. Instead, it seems like Mitchell decided to tell more straightforward narratives in the wake of his most famous work. Both Bl...